In a fractured church-state opinion with no majority consensus, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of a federal law that preserved a Christian cross memorial to World War I veterans amid federal land in California’s Mojave Desert.
“Although certainly a Christian symbol, the cross was not emplaced on Sunrise Rock to promote a Christian message,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the lead opinion in Salazar v. Buono. “Rather, those who erected the cross intended simply to honor our nation’s fallen soldiers.”
